by Guy Haley
…and Holos deflected the pinion talon of the great Lo-tan as it slashed and slashed again at his unprotected face. He was pinned underneath the creature by its single foot, the weight of it squashing the life from him, its talons closing, squealing along the metal of his power armour. The thing’s remaining dexterion-claw scrabbled at his face, ripping his flesh. The taste of his own blood made him wild. He bucked underneath it with renewed strength, the wing came down, he brought Encarmine Dread to meet it…
…and the broodlord’s claw span away into the darkness. Blood pumped from the stump. The other claw came down, tearing Gladius Rubeum from Caedis’s hand. The blade wheeled end over end, to embed itself in the floor. But Caedis had done a grave insult to the broodlord, and the creature relaxed its grip upon him. Caedis pulled at throttling alien hands with all his might and tore a hand free from its grip about his chest. He kicked it hard as he sought to brace himself against the ribbed chitin of the beast’s torso, his boots raking across the thing’s body. He achieved his aim. With sufficient leverage available, he was able to wrench hard at the broodlord’s arm. Its other hand pulled at his own, the remaining upper claw slamming into his helmet again. Alarms chimed, air hissed from a rupture in his visor glass, but Caedis was in the grip of the Black Rage, the killing fury of the sons of Sanguinius. With superhuman strength boosted by his armour, he pulled. Sinews stood out on his neck, his teeth splintered as he ground his jaws in effort. The wiry muscles of the broodlord writhed as it pulled the other way, but in vain. It was in the grip of a Chapter Master of the Space Marines, one of mankind’s greatest warriors.
With a gristly tearing, Caedis wrenched free the arm of the broodlord. He slid to the yielding, alien floor, with the limb in his hands, pursued by a torrent of blood, ragged tendons and veins dragged out from the beast as he went. The broodlord bellowed in pain and fury as Caedis stood. It retreated from him warily, wounded upper claw held protectively to its breast, blood pumping from the socket of its stolen lower limb. Caedis brandished the severed arm of the genestealer above his head and shouted.
‘I am Caedis, Lord of San Guisiga and Master of the Blood Drinkers Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. My brothers bear the gifts of Sanguinius and the Emperor himself. You will not defeat me!’ He cast the arm aside, ran forward, snatching up Gladius Rubeum from the ground as he built to a run. He raised the sword in both hands.
‘Blood is life! Life is duty!’ He cried, and swung the blade. The glittering edge of Gladius Rubeum went in a wide arc that connected with the genestealer’s chest. The momentum of his charge, aided by the sword’s power field, sent the sword clean through the creature’s exoskeletal armour, cutting through the thorax, severing vital organs from one another, and out the other side. Blood was flung up the walls from its tip. Caedis controlled the swing, brought Gladius Rubeum to the guard position, and stood facing the beast.
The genestealer was cut clean to its spine. A torrent of black, alien blood rushed down its chest. With a roar, it fell to its knees. The oppressive presence of its mind wavered, then went out.
With a crash, the broodlord toppled to its side and lay still.
Caedis was already losing himself as he walked over to the genestealer and looked down upon it. The floor warped and changed to the guano-deep rock of the astorgai’s lair. The light brightened, shafts of orange illumination came through cracks in walls that were becoming those of a cave. As he stared at his defeated foe, he no longer saw the broodlord, but the crumpled form of Lo-tan, lord of the astorgai.
‘I am Holos,’ said Caedis, ‘sent by a dream to save my brothers, and I will climb this mountain.’
Without pausing to clean his sword of the alien’s blood, Caedis turned and limped toward a gaping set of doors, to his eyes a wide tunnel mouth from which a weak draught blew into Lo-tan’s foetid eyrie. He could smell the evening air of San Guisiga upon it.
Holos was sorely wounded, his armour was failing, and his strength spent, but he was nearly at the summit.
Mastrik had no time to issue orders to his men. Gene-stealers attacked him from every side. Recognising him as one of the Space Marines’ officers, they strove their hardest to bring him down. His armour was scored by claw marks, his bolter had long run out of ammunition. He fought on with his power sword. Ranial stood by his side, wielding the energies of the warp in their defence against a never-ending stream of the aliens. Once many of the Adeptus Astartes positions had been invested, the enemy came in great numbers from the third tunnel mouth, reinforcing the shrinking numbers of their kind that had been in the first and second waves. From Sorael, there had been no word for some time. Mastrik had been forced to abandon the higher ground and retreat toward the cavern floor when genestealers started to come through the airlock. There on a rise in the floor of the cavern, fifty Terminator brothers of the Novamarines stood firm in a wide circle. Ten more fought hard up on the slopes of the cavern wall, forming a bulwark to safeguard their power armoured brothers, for where the genestealers got among them, the struggle rapidly turned against the Space Marines.
Genestealer corpses drifted in thick clumps toward the floor, forming piles like bloody driftwood when the weak gravity finally brought them down. They were accompanied by the broken bodies and armour fragments of bold adepts. The Terminators were either low on, or out of, ammunition, and slowly, inexorably, things were turning against the Novamarines. Casualty tallies and situation reports clamoured for Mastrik’s attention, but he could not respond. He fought with cool determination, the shadow of desperation coalescing at the back of his mind into the will to destroy. He dodged and thrust, the weak gravity a hindrance to his movements – strike too hard, and he would be sent hurtling into the air by reactive force, move too slow and it would not be long before alien claws found a chink in his armour, and through that, his death. Mastrik and his men were therefore locked in place by their armours’ boots.
He deactivated the mag-locks in sequence so he could move effectively, but this added a further consideration to the combat, and he tired. The genestealers were made for low-gravity conditions, the long claws on their feet seeking out cracks in the ground, or grabbing with unshakeable tenacity to the armour the Space Marines wore.
In his hearts, he realised they would not last long. For every genestealer smashed into the air by a power fist, another two took its place. One by one, his warriors were dying. They were outnumbered and outmatched. The air in the chamber was running out, the gale generated by the atmospheric venting now a breeze. But the genestealers would have finished him and his brothers by the time the vacuum forced them away from the cave. He stabbed his sword into the heart of a genestealer, pushing on the pommel with his free hand to drive it home. There was only combat now, no time for tactical reaction or clever ruses. The plan had failed.
‘Ave Imperator,’ he said. ‘Soon you will see my flesh, and judge me by its story.’
‘Brothers! Smite and rend! Tear and kill! You are the Blood Drinkers, send the enemies of the Emperor to their ruin!’ Sanguinary Master Teale shouted to his brothers, channelling their frenzy. ‘Let slip your bloodlust! Only fury will save us! Drown the enemy in their own blood!’
The Blood Drinkers fought like men possessed. Their Terminators were bloody islands in a sea of blue-black alien integument. Brothers in power armour bludgeoned alien flesh with bolters. Knives ran black with alien blood. Teale’s own squad rocketed from one place to another, striking lightning blows before retreating to do so again.
Sorael listened to the Sanguinary Master’s encouragements. His own life fluids sang with the battle-joy; the desire to rip his helmet from his head and attack the aliens with his teeth was strong.
He was surrounded by genestealers, more pouring out of the gap every second. His Devastators were grappling on the floor with the four-armed monstrosities. Glimpses of blood-red armour came and went, mostly all he saw was surging, night-blue chitin.
Someth
ing slammed into his legs, knocking him forward. Another impact. Two genestealers were trying to tear his feet free of the floor. Another leapt onto his face, claws jabbing at his armour’s cowl, feet scrabbling at his helmet. He swung his sword blindly. It bit flesh, and was wrenched from his hand.
His foot came free. They were dragging him down.
He clawed at the alien on his face. Warnings sounded shrilly in his suit.
Sorael recited the opening lines of the Sanguis Moritura. He grasped the feet of the genestealer at his front as pain shot up his leg. His armour was breached.
He wrenched hard at the creature. Unexpectedly, it came apart in his hands, its blood spreading in a black fan of droplets in front of him.
Through it, he caught a glimpse of bone-and-blue. The genestealers had ceased coming from the crack in the wall, in their stead strode Squad Wisdom of Lucretius, bolters blazing, they cut down a dozen genestealers before they were noticed. They spread out. Brother Tarael of his own Chapter followed. Lightning claws flashing, he charged headlong into a knot of the aliens. The brother in the Novamarine’s squad with the heavy flamer – Sorael did not know his name – levelled his weapon and sent an expanding ball of fire into another group.
‘Emperor be praised!’ bellowed Captain Sorael. ‘We are aided! To me my brothers, to me!’
Sanguinary Master Teale heard his command, and his squad came rocketing in. Three Terminators waded through the press of genestealers, taking up station around Teale’s squad and Sorael. This group of twelve brothers formed a nucleus of resistance upon which the hinge of battle turned. The Novamarines forced their way to them.
‘Sergeant Voldo of the Novamarines,’ said their leader. ‘How can we aid you?’
With the stream of outflanking genestealers cut, Sorael set about reorganising his men, and the battle for the far end of the cavern began in earnest.
Ranial fought grimly on, his brother Mastrik with him always. The mind of the beast guiding the genestealers was strong and poisonous, only with great effort was the Epistolary able to muster his own psychic might in the face of its intrusive presence.
And then, suddenly, it was gone. ‘Brother!’ he shouted urgently.
‘What, Brother Ranial? I am a little preoccupied,’ replied Mastrik. He sounded weary and angry.
‘The mind, the control of the xenos, it has gone!’
Mastrik cut the legs from under a genestealer. ‘Lord Caedis was successful?’
‘No trace remains in the warp, brother-captain. I believe so.’
The two adepts looked at one another. No new gene-stealer attacked them.
‘Come,’ said Mastrik, ‘Let us apprise ourselves of the tactical situation.’
Mastrik and Ranial left the front line of the fifty-strong Terminator band, their ranks closing behind them, and moved to the top of the low rise they surrounded.
All around the cavern, the genestealers were in disarray. They were just as ferocious, just as deadly, but the coordination between their actions had gone. They moved and fought as individual groups, not as a gestalt whole. The pressure on Mastrik’s position eased.
‘Brother! Look!’ shouted Ranial. Joy was evident in his voice. ‘Brother Aresti comes!’
From the tunnels emerged a battered group of Terminators, the first bearing the personal heraldry of the captain of the Fifth Company. Although reduced in number, the two squads accompanying the captain came into the cavern firing. Others followed, coming in ones or twos or in groups. Aresti commanded them to his side, forming them into a broad arrow. He waited for a group of stragglers, then ordered the formation forward. A further forty Terminators of both Chapters joined the fray.
‘By Corvo’s oath,’ said Mastrik, the smile returning to his voice. ‘We might just win this yet.’
Behind him, on the wall facing the giant alien ship, the combat was swinging back in the Novamarines’ favour. The relentless pressure of the alien advance slackening, units of power armoured brothers were freeing themselves from close entanglements and beginning to open fire again.
‘Let us crush them!’ Mastrik shouted. He ordered the Terminators at his position into a line also, to match that of Captain Aresti. Across a floor crowded with milling alien bodies, the two formations of Terminators closed on one another. From the eastern end of the cavern, blood-red armour replaced blue chitin as the Blood Drinkers advanced from their positions.
From somewhere behind them, a Thunderfire cannon opened up, raking the ceiling with heavy rounds.
Nearly two hundred Terminators were in the cavern now. The genestealers faltered. They fought on. Still deadly, still tenacious and cunning, but the tactical acumen and overall battle order they had exhibited before had gone.
Great was the slaughter of the xenos that day.
Chapter 19
The Heart of the Void
‘Great is the wisdom of the Emperor, to him we commit our service, to him we give our fealty. So swore Lucretius Corvo, so swear I.’ Galt prayed, running the beads of his Chapter icon necklace through his fingers. The words came to him as automatically as breathing, inculcated into him from his first days as a neophyte, repeated as a novitiate, finally sang with pride as he became a full initiate. The prayers and cants grew more complex and important as he passed through each stage. They all had their purpose beyond devotion to duty, whether they were hypnotic triggers to activate his gifts, or epic histories of the Chapter that helped weld an organisation of soldiers into an order of brothers, but those first words remained the most potent.
Today, Galt gave thanks for victory. The others were returning from the hulk. There would be a proper ceremony later. Excepting the cathedral serfs and servitors, he was alone, kneeling at the feet of Lucretius Corvo’s giant statue.
When the communications had gone down, Galt had gone directly to the surface of the hulk only to find the tech-priests there under attack from xenos. The genestealers were hardy indeed, seemingly untroubled by the extreme cold and radiation of open space.
Galt had taken command, directing the servitors of the Adeptus Mechanicus alongside his own men. He had found that unpleasant. Servitors served the Emperor in their own way, as all his loyal servants did. Many served aboard the fleets and in the fortresses of his Chapter. Even so, for the Novamarines they represented a fate worse than death, for the souls of servitors were forfeit to the Machine-God, and so they could not enter the halls of their ancestors. That they laboured ceaselessly all around him was of no consequence, but a warrior must have a soul, and servitors had none. The use of them by the forge as heavy weapons platforms was tolerated along with all the Techmarine’s other peculiarities, but Galt did not approve of it.
Still, needs must. He and his men had advanced down the Adeptus Mechanicus’s strange road. All along the route, the beacons the tech-priests had set up were smashed. Teams of tech-priests had been slaughtered, along with some of the Space Marines assigned to protect them. By the time they had fought their way down and broken through to the airlock, the battle was over. Galt had ordered the Terminators resupplied and sent them off on search and destroy missions as per the original strategy.
He clenched his hands tighter about his amulet, the words of a prayer tumbling from his lips. The plan had worked, but by a hair’s-breadth. Without Caedis’s sacrifice and the death of the broodlord, they would surely have failed.
Galt’s self-doubt plagued him. He had underestimated the xenos. His initial intention to obliterate the hulk had been correct, but he had been required to find a way to clear it. The plan was in part of his own devising, and he had almost failed. He felt the eyes of Lucretius Corvo boring into him from the statue’s head. What would Chapter Master Hydariko say?
He pushed his doubts away. They had won, and he had other problems to solve before he would have the time to fully dissect the rightness of his actions. The casualty numbers ran through his mind. Nine
ty-three brothers of both Chapters dead or soon to be accepting the Emperor’s mercy. Among them was a disproportionate number of veterans, with seventeen of the Novamarines’ most experienced lost, and perhaps equally harmful to the Chapter, five Scouts dead on the surface. Two of the veterans would be found places in the armoured tomb-suits of the Chapter’s Dreadnoughts. Twenty-nine suits of Terminator armour from the Novamarines armoury had sustained heavy damage, two were practically unsalvageable.
Fortunately, none of the Chapter officers had been wounded, nor had any of the stone Crux Terminatus badges been lost. Much of the battlegear of the dead had been retrieved and would be repaired and re-sanctified for use by new recruits, as had the majority of the fallen brothers’ gene-seed. Overall material losses were low. The loss of Chapter Master Caedis cast a shadow over the operation. The Blood Drinkers Reclusiarch, Mazrael, had assured him that Lord Caedis had died in a fitting manner – Galt had seen a pict of the monster Caedis had slain and had been amazed – although the Chapter Master’s armour and body were missing. In better tidings for the Blood Drinkers, they had retrieved the brother trapped in the first mission.
Nearly five thousand genestealers had been slaughtered, a kill ratio of fifty-three to one. More would die soon. Already kill-teams closed in on the roosts where additional genestealers slumbered in vacuum. These would prove no trouble in their extermination. Doubtless further brothers would fall in pursuance of these objectives, but the real battle was over. An impressive result, yet still Galt agonised over every one of his dead brothers. ‘They will be buried with all honour,’ he said to himself, ‘interred in the tombs of Fortress Novum.’